Many ex ante measures taken to reduce
disaster risk can deliver co-benefits that are not dependent
on disasters occurring. In fact, building resilience to
climate extremes and disasters can achieve multiple
objectives. These are secondary to the main objective of
disaster risk management of avoiding disaster losses, but
identifying and measuring additional co-benefits can enhance
the attractiveness of disaster risk management investments.

This 2015 index of sustainability
indicators has been prepared in accordance with the
internationally recognized standard for sustainability
reporting Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and
complies with the ‘core option.’ The GRI Index provides an
overview of sustainability considerations within the World
Bank’s lending and analytical services as well as its
day-to-day operations and management of staff. The World

The Zambia Mining Investment and
Governance Review (MInGov) collects and shares information on
mining sector governance, its attractiveness to investors
and how its activities affect national development. It
reviews sector performance from the perspective of three
main stakeholder groups– government, investors in the mining
value chain and civil society – and identifies gaps
between declared and actual government policy and practice.

In a five-month period, man-made fire cost Indonesia $16.1 billion or 2 percent of GDP in 2015. An estimated 2.6 million hectares – an area four times the size of Bali – burned. While the 2015 fires were some of the worst in recent years (in part as a result of el Nino), they are by no means a singular event. Wide-scale fire crises occur annually in Indonesia. Indonesia’s fire story is not just one of loss and damage; fires contribute to significant economic upside for a diverse, if concentrated, group of actors.

While early attempts at land titling in Africa were often unsuccessful, factors such as new legislation, low-cost methods, and increasing demand for land have generated renewed interest. A four-period panel allows use of a pipeline and difference-indifferences approach to assess impacts of land registration in Ethiopia. We find that the program increased tenure security, land-related investment, and rental market participation and yielded benefits significantly above the cost of implementation.

Shifting Kenya’s private sector into
higher gear: a trade and competitiveness agenda’ was born
out of the World Bank’s Trade and Competitiveness (T&C)
Global Practice recent stock taking of its work in Kenya.
This was part of a Programmatic Approach that aimed to
organize T&C’s knowledge, advisory, and convening
services to address Kenya’s development challenges in the
private sector space. By Sub-Saharan African standards,

Bleak short-term economic outlook raises the risk that social and environmental
achievements may not be sustained. The changed economic circumstances have exposed shortcomings in Brazil’s development model, epitomized by the struggle to achieve a sustainable fiscal policy. Against this background, some Brazilians are now asking whether the gains of the past decade might have been an illusion, created by the commodity boom, but unsustainable in today’s less forgiving international environment. Brazil thus finds itself at an important juncture and, to a certain extent, the policy

Although many African countries have recently embarked on revisions of their land legislations to give recognition to customary arrangements and strengthen women's rights, few studies assess the actual or potential economic impact of such steps. We use data from Uganda to assess the impact of tenure regime, perceived transfer rights, and legal knowledge on investment, productivity, and land values.

This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD)
explores how Uzbekistan can consolidate its recent
achievements and accelerate progress on the twin goals of
eradicating extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity.
The SCD is organized into five chapters. Chapter one frames
the issues of poverty reduction and shared prosperity, and
situates them in the context of Uzbekistan’s recent
development. It reviews the status and drivers of progress

Jordan is an upper middle income country which has proven remarkably resilient despite decades of turmoil in its neighborhood. Even with economic stability in the face of massive shocks, the Jordanian government - reflecting the views of the population - has made clear the need for improvement in the current growth trajectory. Public dissatisfaction coalesced around a perception, which the government acknowledges, that previous reform efforts had struggled with implementation, while discretionary decisions and unequal opportunities remain entrenched.

New land reforms are again high on the policy agenda and low-cost, pro-poor reforms are being tested in poor countries. This article assesses the investment and productivity impacts of the recent low-cost land certification implemented in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, using a unique household and farm-plot-level panel data set, with data from before and up to eight years after the reform. Alternative econometric methods were used to test and control for endogeneity of certification and for unobserved household heterogeneity.

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
for Tunisia, prepared jointly by International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), International Finance
Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency (MIGA) covers the period Fiscal Year (FY) 2016
through FY 2020. The CPF is anchored in the Government of
Tunisia’s September 2015 Note d’Orientation Stratégique and
the WBG’s October 2015 Strategy for the Middle East and